Abstract
The ‘death’ of German Idealism has been decried innumerable times since its revolutionary inception, whether by the nineteenth-century critique of Western metaphysics, phenomenology, the various strands of contemporary French philosophy, or the founding figures of analytic philosophy. Even more recently, some strands of speculative realism and new materialism have sought to leave its so-called ‘excesses’ behind. The figures that here strike an accord are as diverse as the movements themselves: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida, Maldiney, Harman, and Meillassoux, to name just a few.
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Notes
- 1.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘Communist Manifesto,’ in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1970), 473.
- 2.
Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 2000), 1.
- 3.
For instance, we once relied on Karl Rosenkranz’ dating of Hegel’s Jena writings. Although the first person with access to Hegel’s literary estate, he grossly misdated them. It was not until the work of the Gesammelte Werke that Hegel’s handwriting, alongside its changes over the years, was put to intense statistical analysis, thereby allowing these texts—so important to the development of the mature system—to be finally properly dated. For a summary of this situation, see George di Giovanni, introduction to Science of Logic, by G.W.F Hegel, ed. and trans. George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), xiv–xv.
- 4.
The editors of Fichte’s Gesamtausgabe have made publicly available multiple versions of the Wissenschaftslehre and various other post-Jena lecture series that were not only never published in Fichte’s lifetime, but also never appeared in his posthumously edited works: Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sämmtliche Werke, 11 vols, ed. I.H. Fichte (Berlin: Veit, 1845–1846). The fact that the former contains 49 volumes is ample evidence of the sheer amount of Fichte now available compared to in the past.
- 5.
After Hegel’s death, his former students came together with the rather noble thought of assembling various transcripts of the lecture series he gave and to which they had access, hoping to bring to the light of a general public the ‘system’ that were convinced was completed for years and presented orally in the lecture hall. However, the methodologies through which they assembled these transcripts into standalone monographs, with the aid of Hegel’s own manuscripts for his lectures, is dubious at best. They paid little to no attention to changes between different lecture courses, combining them as they saw fit to guarantee the logical progression of the dialectical movement as they interpreted it. But without the original source material, it was impossible to test the suspicion that they may have falsified Hegel’s own views. Indeed, it was all we had to go on to have any understanding of his views. Now, however, many manuscripts and transcripts—even ones not available to his students—have been found. When one compares these manuscripts and transcripts with the lectures published by his students, the differences between them are in no case simply philological niceties. For instance, for a succinct account of how this information may drastically challenge our historical picture of Hegel in the case of aesthetics, see Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, ‘Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel’s Aesthetics,’ in Lectures on the Philosophy of Art: The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, by G.W.F Hegel, trans. Robert Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- 6.
Schelling’s Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung was first found 160 years after being transcribed in 1831/1832 and only published in 2004 by Felix Meiner, edited by Walter E. Ehrhardt. Similar stories can be told with other transcripts from lecture series, such as the Grundlegung der positiven Philosophie. Münchner Vorlesung WS 1832/33 und SS 1833, edited by H. Fuhrmans (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1972). These give us new insight into the development of Schelling’s thinking and even previously unknown concepts.
- 7.
There are other volumes that do something very similar and deserve mention. For a non-exhaustive list: see Daniel Breazeale and Tom Rockmore, eds, Fichte: Historical Contexts, Contemporary Controversies (New Jersey: Humanity Books, 1994); Henri Maler, ed., Hegel passé, Hegel à venir (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995); Judith Norman and Alistair Welchman, eds, The New Schelling (New York: Continuum, 2004); Jason M. Wirth, Schelling Now: Contemporary Readings of Schelling (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); and Paul Ashton, Toula Nicolacopoulos, and George Vassilacopoulos, eds,The Spirit of the Age: Hegel and the Fate of Thinking (Melbourne: re.press, 2008).
- 8.
See Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,’ in Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 67ff.
- 9.
Nietzsche, ‘The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,’ 70–71.
- 10.
This is a favorite term of Slavoj Žižek, who explicitly states that, for him, ‘psychoanalysis is ultimately a tool to reactualize, to render actual for today’s time, the legacy of German Idealism.’ (‘Liberation Hurts: An Interview with Slavoj Žižek (with Eric Dean Rasmussen),’ http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/endconstruction/desublimation).
- 11.
Markus Gabriel, for instance, speaks of offering ‘translations’ of the conceptual language of German Idealism ‘into our time’. See Transcendental Ontology: Essays in German Idealism (New York: Continuum, 2011), x, 37, 132. While speaking of philosophers in a language other than there own is a necessary component of good, accessible interpretation, how exactly such translation is done effects the end product drastically.
- 12.
We are, however, aware of the fact a volume ‘rethinking’ a philosophical tradition could have more diversity than there is here. In particular, there is an obvious lack of women among the contributors. Due to extenuating circumstances, some who were involved or interested could not in the end contribute and given the deadlines associated with publication it proved difficult to find others on short notice. While this is absolutely no justification for the omission of women from the volume, we hope that by drawing attention to our own failure and underlining the ongoing problem of representation of women in philosophy and in German Idealism studies in particular we can, at least, help raise awareness of the problem.
- 13.
A translation of the Paulus transcript of the inaugural lectures is, however, in preparation by Michael Vater and Joseph Carew.
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Carew, J., McGrath, S.J. (2016). Introduction: What Remains of German Idealism?. In: McGrath, S., Carew, J. (eds) Rethinking German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53514-6_1
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